The Talisman Read online

  The boys surged forward on his command like trained dogs. Jack got in one blow at Peabody, and then his hands were grabbed and pinned.

  "Led me hid imb!" Sonny cried in his new, muffled voice. He elbowed through the crowd of goggling boys, his eyes glittering with hate. "I wand to hid imb!"

  "Not now," Gardener said. "Later, perhaps. We'll pray on it, won't we, Sonny?"

  "Yeah." The glitter in Sonny's eyes had become positively feverish. "I'mb going to bray on id all day."

  Like a man who is finally waking up after a very long sleep, Wolf grunted and looked around. He saw Jack being held, saw the hypodermic needle, and peeled Pedersen's arm off Jack as if it had been the arm of a child. A surprisingly strong roar came from his throat.

  "No! Let him GO!"

  Gardener danced in toward Wolf's blind side with a fluid grace that reminded Jack of Osmond turning on the carter in that muddy stableyard. The needle flashed and plunged. Wolf wheeled, bellowing as if he had been stung . . . which, in a way, was just what had happened to him. He swept a hand at the hypo, but Gardener avoided the sweep neatly.

  The boys, who had been looking on in their dazed Sunlight Home way, now began to stampede for the door, looking alarmed. They wanted no part of big, simple Wolf in such a rage.

  "Let him GO! Let . . . him . . . let him . . ."

  "Wolf!"

  "Jack . . . Jacky . . ."

  Wolf looked at him with puzzled eyes that shifted like strange kaleidoscopes from hazel to orange to a muddy red. He held his hairy hands out to Jack, and then Hector Bast stepped up behind him and clubbed him to the floor.

  "Wolf! Wolf!" Jack stared at him with wet, furious eyes. "If you killed him, you son of a bitch--"

  "Shhh, Mr. Jack Parker," Gardener whispered in his ear, and Jack felt the needle sting his upper arm. "Just be quiet now. We're going to get a little sunlight in your soul. And maybe then we'll see how you like pulling a loaded wagon up the spiral road. Can you say hallelujah?"

  That one word followed him down into dark oblivion.

  Hallelujah . . . hallelujah . . . hallelujah . . .

  26

  Wolf in the Box

  1

  Jack was awake for quite a long time before they knew he was awake, but he became aware of who he was and what had happened and what his situation was now only by degrees--he was, in a way, like the soldier who has survived a fierce and prolonged artillery barrage. His arm throbbed where Gardener had punched the hypodermic into it. His head ached so badly that his very eyeballs seemed to pulse. He was ragingly thirsty.

  He advanced a step up the ladder of awareness when he tried to touch the hurt place on his upper right arm with his left hand. He couldn't do it. And the reason he couldn't do it was that his arms were somehow wrapped around himself. He could smell old, mouldy canvas--it was the smell of a Boy Scout tent found in an attic after many dark years. It was only then (although he had been looking at it stupidly through his mostly lidded eyes for the last ten minutes) that he understood what he was wearing. It was a strait-jacket.

  Ferd would have figured that out quicker, Jack-O, he thought, and thinking of Ferd had a focusing effect on his mind in spite of the crushing headache. He stirred a little and the bolts of pain in his head and the throb in his arm made him moan. He couldn't help it.

  Heck Bast: "He's waking up."

  Sunlight Gardener: "No, he's not. I gave him a shot big enough to paralyze a bull alligator. He'll be out until nine tonight at the earliest. He's just dreaming a little. Heck, I want you to go up and hear the boys' confessions tonight. Tell them there will be no night chapel; I've got a plane to meet, and that's just the start of what's probably going to be a very long night. Sonny, you stay and help me do the bookwork."

  Heck: "It sure sounded like he was waking up."

  Sunlight: "Go on, Heck. And have Bobby Peabody check on Wolf."

  Sonny (snickering): "He doesn't like it in there much, does he?"

  Ah, Wolf, they put you back in the Box, Jack mourned. I'm sorry . . . my fault . . . all of this is my fault. . . .

  "The hellbound rarely care much for the machinery of salvation," Jack heard Sunlight Gardener say. "When the devils inside them start to die, they go out screaming. Go on now, Heck."

  "Yes sir, Reverend Gardener."

  Jack heard but did not see Heck as he lumbered out. He did not as yet dare to look up.

  2

  Stuffed into the crudely made, home-welded and home-bolted Box like a victim of premature burial in an iron coffin, Wolf had howled the day away, battering his fists bloody against the sides of the Box, kicking with his feet at the double-bolted, Dutch-oven-type door at the coffin's foot until the jolts of pain travelling up his legs made his crotch ache. He wasn't going to get out battering with his fists or kicking with his feet, he knew that, just as he knew they weren't going to let him out just because he screamed to be let out. But he couldn't help it. Wolfs hated being shut up above all things.

  His screams carried through the Sunlight Home's immediate grounds and even into the near fields. The boys who heard them glanced at each other nervously and said nothing.

  "I seen him in the bathroom this morning, and he turned mean," Roy Owdersfelt confided to Morton in a low, nervous voice.

  "Was they queerin off, like Sonny said?" Morton asked.

  Another Wolf-howl rose from the squat iron Box, and both boys glanced toward it.

  "And how!" Roy said eagerly. "I didn't exactly see it because I'm short, but Buster Oates was right up front and he said that big retarded boy had him a whanger the size of a Akron fire-plug. That's what he said."

  "Jesus!" Morton said respectfully, thinking perhaps of his own substandard whanger.

  Wolf howled all day, but as the sun began to go down, he stopped. The boys found the new silence ominous. They looked at one another often, and even more often, and with more unease, toward that rectangle of iron standing in the center of a bald patch in the Home's back yard. The Box was six feet long and three feet high--except for the crude square cut in the west side and covered with heavy-gauge steel mesh, an iron coffin was exactly what it looked like. What was going on in there? they wondered. And even during confession, during which time the boys were usually held rapt, every other consideration forgotten, eyes turned toward the common room's one window, even though that window looked on the side of the house directly opposite the Box.

  What's going on in there?

  Hector Bast knew that their minds were not on confession and it exasperated him, but he was unable to bring them around because he did not know what precisely was wrong. A feeling of chilly expectation had gripped the boys in the Home. Their faces were paler than ever; their eyes glittered like the eyes of dope-fiends.

  What's going on in there?

  What was going on was simple enough.

  Wolf was going with the moon.

  He felt it happen as the patch of sun coming in through the ventilation square began to rise higher and higher, as the quality of the light became reddish. It was too early to go with the moon; she was not fully pregnant yet and it would hurt him. Yet it would happen, as it always happened to Wolfs eventually, in season or out of it, when they were pressed too long and too hard. Wolf had held himself in check for a long time because it was what Jacky wanted. He had performed great heroisms for Jack in this world. Jack would dimly suspect some of them, yet never come close to apprehending their incredible depth and breadth.

  But now he was dying, and he was going with the moon, and because the latter made the former seem more than bearable--almost holy, and surely ordained--Wolf went in relief, and in gladness. It was wonderful not to have to struggle anymore.

  His mouth, suddenly deep with teeth.

  3

  After Heck left, there were office sounds: the soft scrape of chairs being moved, a jingle of the keys on Sunlight Gardener's belt, a file-cabinet door running open and then closed.

  "Abelson. Two hundred and forty dollars and thirty-si
x cents."

  Sounds of keys being punched. Peter Abelson was one of the boys on OS. Like all of the OS boys, he was bright, personable, and had no physical defects. Jack had seen him only a few times, but he thought Abelson looked like Dondi, that homeless waif with the big eyes in the comic strips.

  "Clark. Sixty-two dollars and seventeen cents."

  Keys being punched. The machine rumbled as Sonny hit the TOTAL key.

  "That's a real fall-off," Sonny remarked.

  "I'll talk to him, never fear. Now please don't chatter at me, Sonny. Mr. Sloat arrives in Muncie at ten-fifteen and it's a long drive. I don't want to be late."

  "Sorry, Reverend Gardener."

  Gardener made some reply Jack didn't even hear. At the name Sloat, a great shock had walloped him--and yet part of him was unsurprised. Part of him had known this might be in the cards. Gardener had been suspicious from the first. He had not wanted to bother his boss with trivialities, Jack figured. Or maybe he had not wanted to admit he couldn't get the truth out of Jack without help. But at last he had called--where? East? West? Jack would have given a great lot just then to know. Had Morgan been in Los Angeles, or New Hampshire?

  Hello, Mr. Sloat. I hope I'm not disturbing you, but the local police have brought me a boy--two boys, actually, but it's only the intelligent one I'm concerned with. I seem to know him. Or perhaps it's my . . . ah, my other self who knows him. He gives his name as Jack Parker, but . . . what? Describe him? All right. . . .

  And the balloon had gone up.

  Please don't chatter at me, Sonny. Mr. Sloat arrives in Muncie at ten-fifteen . . .

  Time had almost run out.

  I told you to get your ass home, Jack . . . too late now.

  All boys are bad. It's axiomatic.

  Jack raised his head a tiny bit and looked across the room. Gardener and Sonny Singer sat together on the far side of the desk in Gardener's basement office. Sonny was punching the keys of an adding machine as Gardener gave him set after set of figures, each figure following the name of an Outside Staffer, each name neatly set in alphabetical order. In front of Sunlight Gardener was a ledger, a long steel file-box, and an untidy stack of envelopes. As Gardener held one of these envelopes up to read the amount scribbled on the front, Jack was able to see the back. There was a drawing of two happy children, each carrying a Bible, skipping down the road toward a church, hand-in-hand. Written below them was I'LL BE A SUNBEAM FOR JESUS.

  "Temkin. A hundred and six dollars even." The envelope went into the steel file-box with the others that had been recorded.

  "I think he's been skimming again," Sonny said.

  "God sees the truth but waits," Gardener said mildly. "Victor's all right. Now shut up and let's get this done before six."

  Sonny punched the keys.

  The picture of Jesus walking on the water had been swung outward, revealing a safe behind it. The safe was open.

  Jack saw that there were other things of interest on Sunlight Gardener's desk: two envelopes, one marked JACK PARKER and the other PHILIP JACK WOLFE. And his good old pack.

  The third thing was Sunlight Gardener's bunch of keys.

  From the keys, Jack's eyes moved to the locked door on the left-hand side of the room--Gardener's private exit to the outside, he knew. If only there was a way--

  "Yellin. Sixty-two dollars and nineteen cents."

  Gardener sighed, put the last envelope into the long steel tray, and closed his ledger. "Apparently Heck was right. I believe our dear friend Mr. Jack Parker has awakened." He got up, came around the desk, and walked toward Jack. His mad, hazy eyes glittered. He reached into his pocket and came out with a lighter. Jack felt a panic rise inside him at the sight of it. "Only your name isn't really Parker at all, is it, my dear boy? Your real name is Sawyer, isn't it? Oh yes, Sawyer. And someone with a great interest in you is going to arrive very, very soon. And we'll have all sorts of interesting things to tell him, won't we?"

  Sunlight Gardener tittered and flicked back the Zippo's hood, revealing the blackened wheel, the smoke-darkened wick.

  "Confession is so good for the soul," he whispered, and struck a light.

  4

  Thud.

  "What was that?" Rudolph asked, looking up from his bank of double-ovens. Supper--fifteen large turkey pies--was coming along nicely.

  "What was what?" George Irwinson asked.

  At the sink, where he was peeling potatoes, Donny Keegan uttered his loud yuck-yuck of a laugh.

  "I didn't hear anything," Irwinson said.

  Donny laughed again.

  Rudolph looked at him, irritated. "You gonna peel those goddam potatoes down to nothing, you idiot?"

  "Hyuck-hyuck-hyuck!"

  Thud!

  "There, you heard it that time, didn't you?"

  Irwinson only shook his head.

  Rudolph was suddenly afraid. Those sounds were coming from the Box--which, of course, he was supposed to believe was a hay-drying shed. Some fat chance. That big boy was in the Box--the one they were saying had been caught in sodomy that morning with his friend, the one who had tried to bribe their way out only the day before. They said the big boy had shown a mean streak before Bast whopped him one . . . and some of them were also saying that the big boy hadn't just broken Bast's hand; they were saying he had squeezed it to a pulp. That was a lie, of course, had to be, but--

  THUD!

  This time Irwinson looked around. And suddenly Rudolph decided he needed to go to the bathroom. And that maybe he would go all the way up to the third floor to do his business. And not come out for two, maybe three hours. He felt the approach of black work--very black work.

  THUD-THUD!

  Fuck the turkey pies.

  Rudolph took off his apron, tossed it on the counter over the salt cod he had been freshening for tomorrow night's supper, and started out of the room.

  "Where are you going?" Irwinson asked. His voice was suddenly too high. It trembled. Donny Keegan went right on furiously peeling potatoes the size of Nerf footballs down to potatoes the size of Spalding golfballs, his dank hair hanging in his face.

  THUD! THUD! THUD-THUD-THUD!

  Rudolph didn't answer Irwinson's question, and by the time he hit the second-floor stairs, he was nearly running. It was hard times in Indiana, work was scarce, and Sunlight Gardener paid cash.

  All the same, Rudolph had begun to wonder if the time to look for a new job had not come, could you say get me outta here.

  5

  THUD!

  The bolt at the top of the Box's Dutch-oven-type door snapped in two. For a moment there was a dark gap between the Box and the door.

  Silence for a time. Then:

  THUD!

  The bottom bolt creaked, bent.

  THUD!

  It snapped.

  The door of the box creaked open on its big, clumsy homemade hinges. Two huge, heavily pelted feet poked out, soles up. Long claws dug into the dust.

  Wolf started to work his way out.

  6

  Back and forth the flame went in front of Jack's eyes; back and forth, back and forth. Sunlight Gardener looked like a cross between a stage hypnotist and some old-time actor playing the lead in the biography of a Great Scientist on The Late Late Show. Paul Muni, maybe. It was funny--if he hadn't been so terrified, Jack would have laughed. And maybe he would laugh, anyway.

  "Now I have a few questions for you, and you are going to answer them," Gardener said. "Mr. Morgan could get the answers out of you himself--oh, easily, indubitably!--but I prefer not to put him to the trouble. So . . . how long have you been able to Migrate?"

  "I don't know what you mean."

  "How long have you been able to Migrate to the Territories?"

  "I don't know what you're talking about."

  The flame came closer.

  "Where's the nigger?"

  "Who?"

  "The nigger, the nigger!" Gardener shrieked. "Parker, Parkus, whatever he calls himself! Where is he?"

>   "I don't know who you're talking about."

  "Sonny! Andy!" Gardener screamed. "Unlace his left hand. Hold it out to me."

  Warwick bent over Jack's shoulder and did something. A moment later they were peeling Jack's hand away from the small of his back. It tingled with pins and needles, waking up. Jack tried to struggle, but it was useless. They held his hand out.

  "Now spread his fingers open."

  Sonny pulled Jack's ring finger and his pinky in one direction; Warwick pulled his pointer and middle finger in the other. A moment later, Gardener had applied the Zippo's flame to the webbing at the base of the V they had created. The pain was exquisite, bolting up his left arm and from there seeming to fill his whole body. A sweet, charring smell drifted up. Himself. Burning. Himself.

  After an eternity, Gardener pulled the Zippo back and snapped it shut. Fine beads of sweat covered his forehead. He was panting.

  "Devils scream before they come out," he said. "Oh yes indeed they do. Don't they, boys?"

  "Yes, praise God," Warwick said.

  "You pounded that nail," Sonny said.

  "Oh yes, I know it. Yes indeed I do. I know the secrets of both boys and devils." Gardener tittered, then leaned forward until his face was an inch from Jack's. The cloying scent of cologne filled Jack's nose. Terrible as it was, he thought it was quite a lot better than his own burning flesh. "Now, Jack. How long have you been Migrating? Where is the nigger? How much does your mother know? Who have you told? What has the nigger told you? We'll start with those."

  "I don't know what you're talking about."

  Gardener bared his teeth in a grin.

  "Boys," he said, "we're going to get sunlight in this boy's soul yet. Lace up his left arm again and unlace his right."

  Sunlight Gardener opened his lighter again and waited for them to do it, his thumb resting lightly on the striker wheel.

  7

  George Irwinson and Donny Keegan were still in the kitchen.

  "Someone's out there," George said nervously.